Non Dimenticar
by amritacafe
Summary: In a Remnant without Grimm or Aura, superhumans use their powers for good. But they cannot defeat the greatest power of all—their own fear. A story in three parts.
1. Part 1—Resolve

"All I'm saying is, knowing Pyrrha, she'll be back any day now." Ren patted Jaune on the back, but gently. The poor guy looked like he was going to be sick. Pyrrha had been gone ever since her fight with Penny at the Vytal Festival, and people were beginning to talk. Pyrrha was at the height of Powered achievement, a symbol of competence and conscience in equal measure. In truth, Ren was just as anxious as Jaune; for if Pyrrha could vanish, anyone could.

A table away, team RWBY nattered away, happily discussing classes. Ruby was a little subdued, but the others seemed to lean into their leader, supplying her with the energy she didn't have. That is, until someone touched Ruby's shoulder from behind.

"Uncle Qrow!" she squealed, grabbing his arm. "What are you doing here?" Yang sprang to her feet, and Qrow found himself squeezed between two cheerful nieces. He peeled them off his sides and turned them around to face away from the table.

"Hello, girls," he said, nodding to Blake and Weiss. "You mind if I borrow these troublemakers for a few minutes?" Without waiting for their agreement, he grabbed Yang and Ruby by their elbows and marched them outside. There, he set them against the wall.

"Uncle Qrow, are you okay? You seem tense." Yang crossed her arms, a slight tension in her face. Qrow ran his fingers through his hair, which lay limp and flat against his head. Upon reflection, he looked terrible: unshaven, unkempt, and haggard, like he'd aged a decade since they last saw him. He looked up toward Ozpin's tower, then to his watch, and back to the girls.

"I don't have much time. Take this, leader girl." He handed Ruby a file folder. "Get your team together, read what's in there, and please get out of Vale. Your dad wouldn't forgive me if I didn't tip you two off to what's about to happen." They stared at him. "Come on. Go!" Startled, Ruby and Yang ran back into the dining hall, grabbed a friend each, and ran for the dorms.

When they arrived in their room, thoroughly winded, Blake and Weiss turned on the two sister.

"What in the world—"

"Shhhh. My uncle Qrow gave us this and told us to read it with you guys." Ruby waved the folder around. C'mon, let's at least look at it." Ruby opened the folder. Inside was a thick document with an official seal on it, labelled "People's Protection Act". Weiss frowned.

"Isn't that the law on regulating Powered people that passed last year? The one that's over three hundred pages long?" Ruby didn't even try to read it straight through. Instead, she flipped through until she saw a highlighted section. It was only about a sentence, and she read it out loud.

"...granting those selfsame powers the reserved right to neutralize individuals deemed deleterious to public order...well, what does that mean?" But Blake had already fallen silent in horror, clutching her mouth. Ruby turned to the next sheet of paper. It was a picture of a numbered list of names. The list's title was "Dangers to the State", and it read:

Pyrrha Nikos—invulnerability coupled with high profile and martial skill

Penny Polendina—artificial Power technology

Raven Branwen—unwilling to cooperate

Adam Taurus—unwilling to cooperate

Ozpin Head—unwilling to cooperate

Qrow Branwen—unwilling to cooperate

Ruby Rose— eyes indicate potential to equal Summer Rose in power

The further down the list Ruby went, the more of her classmates' names she saw on the list, with labels like "high potential" and "dissident attitude". Every member of Team RWBY was in the top thirty, and everyone she'd gone through initiation with was in the top fifty. When the nearly one-hundred strong list was done, she turned to the next document, which was just pictures. The first one caught her eye with a flash of red.

Pyrrha, with a hole in her forehead. A picture of Pyrrha's body being buried in a forest under the cover of night, and the coordinates of her grave.

Penny, her body hacked up and looted for parts.

And then after that, voyeur-style pictures of everyone else on the list, going about their daily lives. Ruby's skin was naturally fair, but she was as pale as a sheet. Someone out there had it out for an entire generation of Powered kids deemed too powerful, and everyone she loved was on the kill list.

Team RWBY sat for a moment in silence..

"What do we do? Do well tell Team JNPR about Pyrrha?" Yang asked, eyes still wide. Blake shook her head violently, her "bow" waving back and forth.

"I think your Uncle Qrow means us to get out while we still can. While we can guarantee our safety. They can't make ALL of us disappear. If they want every name on this list, they're going to come for our whole academy. And I don't want to be here when this happens." Ruby mumbled something, her bangs hanging over her eyes.

"What are you saying?" Weiss demanded. "That we're going to leave our classmates to die? My father has ships, I can call in his help."

"What if your father is in on this? And if he's not—how long until his name is on this list?" Blake asked, almost shouting. "I want to be safe!"

"They killed her," said Ruby. Everyone stopped talking and looked at her. Tears were streaming down her face, and her eyes seemed to glow faintly silver in the light from the window. "Penny. Pyrrha. They died, for what? So someone else could feel safe. I don't want to be safe if this is what it costs." Yang immediately rushed to Ruby's side.

"Shh, it'll be okay," she said. Ruby shook her head.

"You don't understand. I'm not leaving Beacon. I'm fighting for it. I don't want to be safe. I want to stand for something. Will you guys stay with me?" She looked from face to face. She saw shock, confusion, and fear in all of them. But they all nodded.

"Team RWBY is what we are. No splitting up, no leaving people behind. We're with you, leader," said Blake. "Promise." Weiss gave a weak smile.

"How long do you think we have to prepare?" she asked. Ruby frowned.

"I don't think we have much time at all. We have to get the word out. When they come to Beacon, we'll be ready for them. For now, get in all the training you can. We won't have the luxury soon."

* * *

Hours later, as the sun set, Ruby was walking by herself. Her trademark cape fluttered in the slight breeze, and she had her arms folded over her stomach, taking every step carefully. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that when someone stepped out from behind a shrub, she nearly drew her weapon before she caught sight of a familiar blue-white and realized it was Weiss.

"Hey," said Weiss, blushing. "I, uh, saw you. Through a window. Thought you might want some company. You know, girl to girl." Ruby took a deep breath, still recovering from the shock. Then she mustered up a smile and took her hand off of her scythe.

"Sorry about that. I'm a little paranoid. Yeah, of course you can walk with me. What's on your mind?" Weiss laughed, but it sounded almost like a cackle.

"You know what's on my mind, Ruby. What else could I possibly be thinking about? It's like my whole life, I was living this dream where we and the regular people could live together and get along. I closed my eyes every time I heard of a Powered kid getting killed by cops, or Paladins converging on another protest. I thought we could live in this dreamy let's-all-work-together paradise, but they just won't let us.

"What did we do to deserve this? Did we reveal ourselves too fast? Not polite enough? Too scary all at once? Or was it the fact that we huddle up in academies and don't let them in? Was it...was it my family, making money with our powers? I just don't understand anything. And I'm scared, Ruby. I'm really scared." She broke off, and they walked in silence for another few seconds. The path turned to grass under their feet. "Ruby?"

"I'm just thinking."

"About what?

"What you said. I've been thinking ever since we got the file. And I've been crying, like, a lot." Weiss smiled a little.

"Me too."

"And I decided that I'm not going to be afraid anymore. I decided that even if I have to do it by myself, I'm going to fight until we have a world where a powered person can be a hero or a schoolteacher and no one blinks an eye. I'm going to fight until there's no one left that stands between you and that dream. Because we deserve that world. Pyrrha deserved that world. Penny deserved that world."

The path dropped into a cliff overlooking the Emerald Forest, where their time at Beacon Academy for Powered Youth had begun. The sun was setting, and the wind lifted the edges of Ruby's cape, a fluttering like rose petals in a breeze. Weiss flushed looking at Ruby, just ahead of her at the edge of the cliff. Ruby had the cut of a hero, right in the way she set her jaw against the setting sun.

"Hey, Ruby?"

"Yeah?" Ruby turned back to face Weiss, and felt soft lips press against hers. For a split second, the kiss held—and then Weiss pulled away and ran, Haste glyphs speeding her departure back toward Beacon.


	2. Part 2—Breakdown

James Ironwood slumped behind his desk. There was a drop of water at the corner of his mouth, left behind from when he'd swallowed an aspirin a few seconds ago. He pulled out his hip flask and washed it all down with a swig of rum. He sat back and closed his eyes, on the verge of dozing off, when the elevator into his office chimed. Immediately, he reached into his coat and produced a pistol, which he held in his lap.

The doors opened with a hiss, and Qrow Branwen stepped out. Ironwood watched him carefully. These were uncertain days. Down beneath the ship, in view of the windows he was seated in front of, Beacon Academy was in shambles, the student-lead dissidents engaging units of automated and human soldiers, taking down Paladins. It was out of his control. Long before he had arrived here, command of his fleet had switched to remote control from an undisclosed location. He was on the throne, but no more than a puppet.

"You can put the gun away, Jimmy," said Qrow, drinking from a flask. "I'm not here to kill you. Things aren't that bad." He didn't have to say _yet_. "I just came to talk. To clear the air, all that good stuff." Ironwood put his gun back in its holster. Glynda might have had a point, about his inclination to bravado. It occurred to him that if he chose peaceful routes more, he could have avoided the mistakes that lead him here.

"What's there to talk about? I have no control over the movements of this fleet anymore. If I go to land in this uniform your niece will probably try to kill me, but I'll be shot for treason if I refuse to fight." He put a hand to his temple. "Your niece. Good God, you were the leak, weren't you?" Qrow spread his arms and shrugged. The shadow of a cloud fell over his face.

"I gave them a chance to escape. Not my fault they chose to fight the whole damn world."

"But it is your fault that a fifteen year old girl with Summer Rose's powers is trained to use one of the deadliest weapons on Remnant," Ironwood said. "And if you had not coached her to the point she is today, given her the information she has—"

"James. Are you seriously suggesting that I should have let my niece grow up helpless and then left her to die? Because if you're suggesting that, let me tell you, you should have shot me when I walked in." Ironwood took another sip from his flask, and Qrow had to laugh. "Look at us. Two drunk old men, bickering. Can't change the world. Only young people can do that."

"She's wounded, you know," Ironwood said. "Hasn't been in the field for a few days. I have intel that she was stabbed in the eye." Qrow nodded. "She's not like Summer. She's not innovating with her power. Be careful, Qrow. You don't know what you made, giving a girl intel like that. You don't know what she'll be capable of. Her powers...they're _growing_ , Qrow. She is getting _stronger_."

"That's impossible," Qrow said, but he hesitated. "There's never been a documented case of Powered abilities increasing, or of a Powered person developing new powers." Ironwood raised his flask in a surprisingly solemn toast.

"Well, someone on the ground disagrees with you. You may want to revise your definition of 'impossible'."

* * *

The dorms felt haunted, empty as they were. There were no students left at Beacon. All those who had not wanted to be soldiers had fled into the wilds to hide; there had been rumors of extermination teams hunting them down one by one in the deepest forests where no one would ever find the bodies. Weiss hoped that these rumors were false, but knew in her heart that they probably weren't.

Beyond the fact that most of the population was gone, the dorms especially had come under heavy mortar fire. Accordingly, most of the student resisters now lived in small camps spread out all over Vale proper. Weiss picked her way through the broken shell of a once beautiful building, coughing occasionally from the heavy dust her feet kicked up. She hated this place, but there was no where else for Ruby to stay.

The upper stories were terribly unsafe now that the structure of the building had been so heavily compromised. Instead, Weiss went through what had once been the ground floor until she found a huge piece of sheetrock. She knocked on it twice, and it shifted a few feet to the side, grinding against the ground. Ruby was propped up against a piece of wall there.

"How are you doing?" Weiss asked, sitting down next to her. Ruby gave her a little smile, but it was half wince.

"Eye hurts. Hearing things. But, you know, I'm getting good practice in." Ruby raised a hand, and several chunks of debris rose into the air. With a lazy flick of the wrist, Ruby tossed them away. Weiss followed this with interest.

"You couldn't do that before, could you?" Ruby shrugged.

"Little bit. I'm getting stronger." Ruby flexed her fingers. "What's going on out there? I hate being cooped up in here, injury or no injury. You guys need me. And the others—" Ruby stopped abruptly.

"What others?" Weiss asked. Ruby looked away.

"Oh, you know. Just a few students, and some of the deserters from Atlas. It's nothing. Forget I said anything." Weiss raised her eyebrows, but her mission was more urgent than whatever group of kids Ruby hung out with when she wasn't with the team.

"Well, if you don't like being here, you're in luck. The fleet's running ragged. We got a tip that they're sending us the bulk of their force tonight, and we've been preparing for a few days to intercept them. Soldiers, Paladins, the whole lot. They might even use the last of their bombs and shells for air support. It's going to be hairy, Ruby. We need you. Can you stand?" Ruby tore a strip of red fabric off of her cape and tied it around the mess of gore that had once been her right eye.

"If I can't walk, I'll just float," she said. "Take me to where the battle is."

* * *

It was a sight for the history books. Ruby Rose, red cloth over one eye, caped and wielding a scythe bigger than she was, perched on the smoking wreck of the biggest Paladin ever manufactured. It was practically the size of a city block, with two cockpits and more weapon loadouts than any two people could reasonably coordinate.

It would have been fairy-tale, if only Weiss hadn't seen her older sister lifeless in the hands of an anonymous soldier, dragged from one of the cockpits with her body still smoking.

* * *

Finding Ruby was easier said than done. The camps were all celebrating, and her name was being spoken in every corner of every fireside gathering. But Weiss knew her habits, knew she wouldn't be at a party. She was in too much pain, and had taken to long brooding spells alone. So when Weiss tracked her down to a warehouse by the docks, she expected to find Ruby crouched behind a barrel. What she got instead was a rifle in her face from the guard posted at the door.

"I'm Weiss Schnee," she said. "Here to see Ruby. Stand down." He laughed.

"Chick, I don't care if you're Ozpin's daughter. You don't get into the meeting unless the Reaper-General requested you personally." With a flick of her fingers, Weiss froze the guard to the ground and iced over his rifle.

"Nice talk," she said, and walked inside. Electricity was out, so some enterprising person had gotten their hands on what looked like a lifetime supply of candles, making a flickering orange aura of light. On a stage, several people were seated at a rectangular table, facing an audience at least a hundred strong. Among them were Ruby, Jaune and his team, and a man Weiss didn't know, wearing a bowler hat and propping up a cane along the side of the table.

Weiss watched from the back, out of reach of the lights.

"It's an issue of scale," someone in the crowd was saying. "It's all well and good to say you can take this army or that army, but we don't have supply lines, resources, money." Ruby cut in.

"Excuse me, can I speak?" A reverent hush fell over the crowd. Ruby was the messiah tonight. "What did we have here, in Vale? A few deserters and some kids. Realistically, there's no way we could have done what we did tonight. But we did have three things that turned the tide: Powered people, passion for our cause...and me. As we fight stronger enemies, we can use their resources. But if we give up on a just world because it's hard, we might as well not have fought at all today."

"Long live the Reaper-General!" someone yelled, and most people laughed, but a few people cheered. Jaune stood up,and it must have been a cue, because Ren and Nora did, too, listening as he spoke.

"My teammate died because someone in an office decided she was too dangerous to live. Well, I say _they're_ too dangerous to live. So me and my team? We're going with Ruby, even if it's just the the four of us against the whole world. You can come or not. But whether we're four or four thousand, the Soldiers of Grimm will live on. Good night." Hushed conversation greeted his words, and people slowly began to trickle out of the warehouse.

Ruby was one of the few who stayed. But Weiss, shaken, fled before she could be seen, feeling nothing but terror. Taking Vale back from oppression was one thing. But to make the mission the entire world was nothing less than terrorism. Weiss had to stop her. Making up her mind to tell Yang and Blake, she headed back to Team RWBY's tent, full of trepidation for the days to come.


	3. Part 3—Forgiveness

The air smelled noxious. Yang sprawled over a beaten couch, still wearing her sunglasses even though they were inside. The only sign of life she gave off was the occasional orange glow of her cigarette, and the subsequent emission of smoke from her nostrils. Otherwise she gave no indication that she was aware of her surroundings at all. The smoke only intensified the bunker's claustrophobia.

"Will you pay attention, Yang?" Weiss sounded as sharp as ever. Even her uniform, dirty and frayed though it was, still smelled a little like starch. But today, her team's responses were less than military. Yang blew more smoke into the air, and Blake threw a dart at a wanted poster, missing by a mile and hitting the wall. She picked another dart, not seeming to notice.

"Mmph." Yang sat up and flicked half an inch of ash onto the floor. Blake sniffed the air, and took a drink of water, hoping to stave off a headache. She had never really liked the smoke, but now at the end of their time together, she almost missed complaining about it. "Say what you need to say, Ice Queen. I'm tired as hell."

"If you had been listening before, I wouldn't have to repeat myself. As I was _saying_ , we've taken out enough of their leadership to have the Soldiers of Grimm on the retreat. It's been a hard year, ladies, but we made it, and we only have one target left to eliminate. Unfortunately—"

"We know it's her, Weiss. We've always known it would be her in the end. You don't have to make this a federal fucking issue." Yang stubbed out her cigarette on her gauntlets, a little harder than necessary. "Just tell me what to fucking punch." Weiss closed her eyes and took in a deep breath through her nostrils. "Don't do that shit! Do not do that shit. That sanctimonious aloof leader shtick ends right here. Can you do that for me? For us?" Blake looked up in alarm, unused to being brought into her squadmates' arguments.

"Yang, when we became Team WYB, you two voted me leader." Team WYB, or Team "Wipe"—the premier assassination squad in the rebellion against the iron-fisted rule of the Reaper-General and her Soldiers of Grimm, who'd been stepping on the throat of the world for over a decade.

"Well, you used to be pretty cool," Yang muttered. Blake cleared her throat.

"Can we not do this today? It's going to be hard enough as it is." Weiss indulged Blake with a smile and a short nod.

"I quite agree. Now," she said, shooting Yang a corrosive glare, "the allied pan-Remnant forces are closing on Fort Goliath as we speak, and we have intel that the Reaper-General is still inside. While the infantry fight the Soldiers of Grimm, we'll sneak in through a compromised security checkpoint on the west side of the castle. Remember, this place is a ruin, and—"

"We have any gear? Super strength I have, but I'm not totally invulnerable and our little run in with Blake's old boytoy kind of shredded my last set of body armor." Yang nodded to Blake, who flushed despite herself. Weiss pushed down her annoyance. It was a good question, even if Yang had interrupted her.

"Care package will be coming up the river in about forty-five minutes, containing body armor, combat gear, and letters from home, if we have any. And, look—if either of you want out, no judgment. I'll say you were KIA and she fucking disintegrated you, because God only knows she can probably do that at this point." Yang grinned and pointed to her cheek, where a deep scar disfigured the left side of her face and nose.

"Baby girl, if it's the last thing I do, I'm getting my little sister back for this."

Blake threw a dart at Jaune Arc's wanted poster. He'd been dead six months now—by her hands, no less— so his poster was held to the wall almost exclusively by dart. Blake would have to switch to a new one. Luckily, there was still one clean poster left to hit.

Their last target wore a plain black eyepatch; her remaining eye was a crisp silver. The face that eye was set in could easily have been mistaken for sweet, if not for the veneer of filth and exhaustion that covered its every inch, bringing out every wrinkle and crevasse a thirty-year old woman could possess: Reaper-General Ruby Rose, the Girl Who Touched the Gods. In all the history of the world, no one's powers had been stronger.

Blake's dart soared through the air and speared the poster through the eyepatch.

* * *

"Reaper-General?" Ruby looked down at the young soldier who'd run in to report with something like pity. So earnest. So trusting. Even if Ruby survived today, he most certainly would not. "Team WYB are here. Security footage—" Ruby sucked her teeth and was met with instant silence.

"They didn't even disable the cameras? They've gotten sloppy in my absence. What's your name?" The soldier smiled. He had good skin, dark skin. He was probably the only kind-faced person Ruby had seen in years.

"Flynt. Flynt Coal, Madam General." He gave a little salute, stood a little straighter. The sound of mortar shells in the distance drew his eyes away from her for a second, but his attention couldn't leave for long.

"Flynt, what is your power? What ability brought you to our doorsteps?" He smiled.

"Music, madam. The sounds I make can push, even kill." Ruby waved a hand toward the door.

"Go on, then, Flynt. Get between Team WYB and me. I'm trusting you with my life." He nearly tripped over himself in his rush to prove himself a credit to his army and his General. Ruby could already see how he was going to die with the Sight in her ruined eye. It would be like this:

He would push with his voice, and throw them all back. Blake, of course, would be using her dummy ability and sneak behind him while her dummy was blown away. But he worked with sound, he would sense her—and while he fought Blake, Weiss' ice would creep along the wall. Blake would stall him, then let him score a hit on a dummy. Meanwhile Yang would slide along the ice, come down, and use her monstrous strength to punch him into the afterlife.

Distantly, Ruby made out a boom. That would be the punch. Her old partners were terribly predictable. They could have just as easily dropped a massive bomb on Fort Goliath, but instead of risk innocent life to ensure her death, they were putting the fate of the world in their own hands. And those hands had failed to stop her before. Ruby smiled. Her silver eye could vanquish any enemy, but her true power was behind the eyepatch.

Her door creaked open, and a grenade flew in. Ruby caught it in a silver field and watched it explode, fire blooming in a cage. Team WYB came in with no cover, clutching their weapons, but the room was empty, save Ruby sitting in her throne of crystal.

"Hey, Rubles!" said Yang. She looked good, except the scar. That had been one of Ruby's best days; when she had realized that even her wonderful big sister, savior of the world, could not stop her. "Guess who's here to kick your little ass? The cape looks really stupid by the way." Ruby looked down at the cape in question and took it off, leaving her in a loose black bodysuit, clearly intended for combat.

"You know, Yang, you really should leave. I can't promise your survival if you try to fight me. You too, Blake. This could be pretty bad." Weiss laughed, high and sad.

"Still looking out for us, leader?" Weiss demanded. Ruby smiled at her, and for a moment the face of the hardened general fell away, and she was just a fifteen year old girl who loved strawberries and corgis best of all the things in the world. Then somewhere the smile changed into a grimace, and Ruby said, "Oh, hardly."

Ruby's silver eye flared with light. Team WYB all lunged away from where they'd been standing together, just in time for the floor to explode, showering them all in needle-like fragments of the once pristine floor. Blake was shooting at her, but Blake was a laugh. A hand sweep to the side, and Blake felt herself picked up and thrown into a wall.

Ruby almost missed Weiss, sliding toward her baseball style on a path of ice, but when she saw her, she stomped on the ground, shattering the path. Weiss retaliated with a barrage of icicles, and when Ruby took flight, Weiss followed her with her projectiles, lodging them in the floor and ceiling. Until Ruby flew past her range and landed again.

Blake threw a knife, and Ruby caught it between her thumb and forefinger.

"You all aren't any stronger," she said, admiring the blade. "I've gained more power since we last saw each other than you all have combined. Give up, and maybe—" Yang balled her fists up together and smashed Ruby across the back, hitting her into the floor so hard it nearly cracked. Hauling Ruby into the air for another blow, Yang cocked her fist. Ruby smiled right in her face as the silver eye began to glow.

"YANG!" shrieked Blake, but it was too late; a silvery beam blasted Yang across the room, where she was still. Ruby flicked her forehead, and Yang's body flew across the room and against a wall. Ruby rolled her shoulders as though she was trying to get rid of a stiff spot.

"She should have been happy with the scar. Damn girl made me kill her." Blake screamed again, ignoring Weiss's yells of admonition, and charged. Ruby looked down at her sadly and threw Blake's throwing knife back to her. A dummy appeared, but Ruby's ruined eye saw through illusions. The knife lodged in Blake's throat, and Ruby watched in interest as Blake choked, falling to her knees and then on her face. Ruby looked up to Weiss. "Just you and me, girlfriend!"

"Fuck," said Weiss, beginning to cry. "Fuck! Why are you like this?" Ruby shook her head, and in a flash stood in front of Weiss. With one hand Ruby slowly pushed Weiss to the ground, bending her so far back that she began to cry out. Weiss felt warmth on her face: tears, dripping from Ruby's eye to her cheek.

"Do you remember Pyrrha, Weiss? Penny? All the good powered souls who died to grease the engines of your world? I decided I would fight in their memory. And I have. I am. Only you sheep to weak even to follow the strong protested." Weiss mustered up her strength and spat in Ruby's face.

"I loved you once, can you believe that? And now I'm going to kill you."

"Before I break your back? How's that?" Ruby raised her eyebrows. Her eye had said nothing of her death, or Weiss's. She would hurt Weiss enough to stop her from fighting, and take her away from here, somewhere they would never be found.

"Oh, easy," Weiss said. "You should have restrained my hands." And an icicle shot up from her palm directly into Ruby's remaining eye, tunnelling in enough to destroy it but not enough to kill. In the end, Weiss didn't have it in her to look into that eye and kill the person she knew was behind it.

"Oh, wow," Ruby said. "You really got me. Wow. Hey, Weiss...for what it's worth, I loved you too." She slumped, knocked out by the pain and seeing nothing. Weiss fell to the floor, straightened her back, and stood up, wiping her face with her sleeve.

"White Rose to base. White Rose to base. Reaper-General Rose is in custody." She shut off her radio, unwilling to hear cheers. Instead, she got on her knees and wiped a drop of blood from the side of Ruby's mouth. "You bitch. The worst part is, I almost forgive you."

* * *

"Final remarks, Ms. Schnee." Weiss stood up, brushing a wrinkle out of her suit, and walked around the table. She looked from the judge to the prosecuting attorney, then back to Ruby, who sat with heavy bandages wrapped around her face. Weiss had seen beneath them, to the ruined eyes they concealed. She knew who Ruby was, beneath the fame, the death, and the legend. And knowing that, she had come here to advocate in Ruby's defense.

Ruby was not the only war criminal to be tried here in Vale, but she was the last, and the most famous. The "courtroom" was the ruined stadium used for the Vytal Festival; spectators watched from the stands, listening to lawyers speak for hours. But Weiss wasn't a lawyer. She wasn't even really aware of the laws. She'd conferred with Ruby, and with Ruby's legal defense to write as persuasive a closing statement as she could. She took a deep breath and spoke.

"Your Honor, assembled guests...Ruby Rose is not a Reaper, and she is not a General. She is not a Soldier of Grimm. She is not even really a genocide—the eradication of Powerless people was carried out by people under her command without her knowledge. Those are labels, applied to her by situations and people who know nothing of her story. This is not a trial to prove a crime. Ruby would be dead already if that was the case. We all know who she is and what she did, and she has always freely admitted her sins. But if this is not a trial about crime, what is it a trial about? I would assert on Ruby's behalf that this is a trial of guilt.

"We stand in a stadium where Powered children once vied for supremacy, fought for fame and recognition, for your entertainment. This building is the ultimate symbol of the folly of the world before the Soldiers of Grimm. We preached a utopian peace we made no effort to create, and it fell apart. Now, due to the Soldiers, Powered humans outnumber the Powerless three-to-one. And it is all of our faults. All of our hatred, our frustration, our fury at being treated like second-class citizens by the Powerless went into the creation of paramilitary groups like the Soldiers, groups that assimilated once it became clear who was the biggest bully. Ruby is not special. She was in the right place at the right time with the right power, and that could have been any of us.

"I used to be her teammate. You all heard Yang Xiao Long's testimony. Ruby has attacked her twice with her eye beams. One disfigured her face, the other took her arm—but she lived. The same power that blasted through a Paladin could not breach a girl's skull. Blake Belladonna can't speak any longer, but the chances of a knife thrown into the throat damaging only the vocal cords are so small that it could be considered impossible. Why do impossible things keep happening with Ruby Rose? Because she does not control her power. Because she can only do what she thinks she can, and only what she truly wants.

"There are those who think she grew in strength. Hogwash. A schoolgirl has no need of the power to destroy without limit. She had no idea what strength she could reach for. But I believe more than ever, now that both her eyes are gone and she is Powerless, that Ruby is necessary. We can't forget what we could have been, what we were, what we are. So I am not suggesting acquittal. To do that would be to spit on countless graves. I am suggesting lifetime imprisonment.

"But not in a dank facility. A house, with staff. A place where authors, painters, musicians, and historians can come to see her, come to converse with a living piece of history. A place for a human to live. Not a reward for her crimes but a safeguard against forgetting who really was behind the insurrection. A person, just like us.

"Let Ruby Rose live. Not because she isn't a mass murderer. Because she is a mass murderer who went to school with us, and who subconsciously could not bring herself to kill her school friends. And that is worth studying. That is worth preserving, even under strictest surveillance. And best of all, it is safe. Thank you." Weiss bowed briefly and sat back down. The jury handed the judge an envelope, which he opened, reading off the charges and recommending sentences.

"The recommendation of the death sentence has been accepted," said the judge. Weiss stood up.

"That's too bad." A wave of white rushed out from where Weiss stood, rushing out of the arena and up the stands, freezing the entire place solid. In an instant, a sedate court became a scene from the Ice Age. Ruby's head perked up.

"What just happened?" she asked. "Weiss?" Weiss grabbed Ruby by the upper arm and carried her princess-style out of the stadium. Waiting there was a small airship, already open. Shouts of dismay were already starting to come from the frozen spectators. They didn't have much time. Weiss ran into the ship, and the ramp to enter it closed behind her. The intercom crackled.

"Weiss, is that you?" Yang's voice bounced off the walls. Ruby frowned.

"What's going on?" she asked. "Are we running from the law?" Weiss set her down and lead her by the hand to the bridge, where Yang and Blake piloted the ship away from Vale, far out past the sea.

"Something like that," said Weiss. "We're just going to run until we can't anymore, and wherever we stop, that's home."


	4. Epilogue—Go Tell It On The Mountain

Do not climb the mountain.

If you climb the mountain, you may catch sight of the woman who patrols it. On the mountain, there are two of this woman. One lives inside a locket, seventeen and impossibly beautiful, her smile untainted by fear or worry. The other's face is hideously disfigured, twisted around an old scar—but the disfigured face is honest. Her eyes work perfectly, and when she encounters you during her patrol, she will shoot on sight. She will not miss.

She will go back to a house she built herself, with supernatural strength and force of will, from felled logs and the guts of a flying machine. It is a chimera of a house, made of rough wood and brushed steel, but she has never felt as at home anywhere as much as here. She will go back to a girl who cannot speak, who will make words with her hands when her body language won't do.

She will fight, always. She will never break herself of the worry that they will someday be found. She will practice her fighting techniques once a day and bathe in the icy river to discipline herself. She refuses to be a civilian. She will always be a soldier. This is how she has chosen to live, how she has chosen to mark this mountain.

Before the winter, she will come down from the mountain and buy supplies from the townsfolk, who are never sure how she carries it all back up. But they do not ask, she does not tell, and she returns to the mountain, never having to tell people that she is not to be followed. Those who climb the mountain never return.

* * *

Do not climb the mountain.

If you climb the mountain, you may find yellow eyes looking back at you from your shadow. These eyes will be the last thing you ever see. You will not be the preferred prey of the eyes' owner, but the owner will have seen enough killing to know that sometimes she won't always get what she came for. With that in mind, she will hunt and trap, but mostly hunt. The animals she will kill, skin, and take apart will become food, clothing, and art supplies. But she will try not to hunt too often. She will be neither completely human nor completely animal, and so she will understand the tenuous balance that she must strike between the two.

She will understand a great many things, but especially the power of listening. A throwing knife will have robbed her of the ability to speak, but she also lost the ability to interrupt and to exclaim. So she will learn to listen. She will listen to the sounds of the forest and the music of the wind. She will listen to the songs the clouds sing. She will listen to her friends' breathing at night, and to the snores of the woman who sleeps in her bed. She listens to the cold metal of the locket on her chest.

But she will speak, too, in her own way. This woman will learn to sign, and all the members of her house who can will have learned to sign back, even though it's easier just to talk most of the time. One of her housemates will have been blind for a long time, so this one can't sign, so the yellow-eyed woman will go out of her way to communicate with her in Braille notes, small favors, gentle touches. But between the yellow-eyed woman and the blind one, there will be a darkness difficult to breach.

Darkness will be the element of this woman. Those who climb the mountain at night learn well that she is a light sleeper, because she is always listening.

* * *

Do not climb the mountain.

If you climb the mountain, you may find a house by happy accident. You will feel cold as you approach it, and you may put this down to a sudden chill. You will be wrong. The statue you freeze into will be shattered by an heiress in hard-wearing leather boots. The heiress will bury the leftover pieces of you behind her house and in an hour will have forgotten you in favor of her work.

The heiress will write. Sometimes she'll write poems with ten word long titles, other times stories. In the winters she will write large novels she never finishes, because when the end is in sight the sun will return and melts the snow away, and she can't reflect without it. But mostly what she will write is oral histories. She will ask her housemates about their life stories. Where they're from, their hobbies, their wartime experiences. She will write up essays on themes: virginity, war, art.

In what passes for spare time, she will the blind woman about her life in excruciating detail. She is writing a biography, gathering and parsing information. This will be her true life's work. In the room she and the blind woman share, sheaves of paper will be scattered like fallen leaves, and no one else will understand how they are organized. But when she is done, she will make copies of the biography and send them abroad through great communication towers. She will make sure the whole world sees this story.

The air around her is cold, but if you are good at concealing yourself, you may see her pressing her mouth to that of the blind woman in corners when she thinks she is invisible. Then, despite her freezing aura, this woman's mouth becomes hot. Then, falling into the shadows, she will make love to this blind woman, this woman called Reaper. And when she is done, she will notice you, and she will freeze you solid for daring to invade the Eden where even God never dared to tread. Those who sneak up the mountain find that winter is always waiting.

* * *

Do not climb the mountain.

If you evade the other three women, you may find one in dark sunglasses. She will be outside, tending to a garden, feeling vegetables for their ripeness, turning soil, watering, fertilizing. She is used to combat fatigues, but she will be wearing a sundress and a straw hat. She will look like a painting.

She will not see you, but she will know you're there. She will congratulate you for making it this far, and laugh when you do not understand that you have survived only by the graces of God. She will invite you in for a cup of green tea, and she will tell you a story. A story of oppression, resistance, war. She will tell you about crimes that make you sweat. This sweet gardener will talk about disfiguring and disabling people she has loved more than anything else in the world, and her tone of voice will make it seem like small talk.

When the tea is gone she will steep the leaves again and keep talking. She will tell you about how she adjusted to blindness, how the sweet taste of bell peppers from her garden once stopped her from opening her arteries. She knows too much about how to die. It has taken her until now, in her middle age, to think about how to live.

You will be shaken. She will take you outside, and you will wonder at how sure her steps are, for someone who is blind. She will smile, and tell you a secret: her empty eyes still have power. It is not a power of battle. It is a power of understanding. In the ruins of her sight she found the silence of the world and made it part of herself. She is something beyond you, and beyond herself. You will not understand. When she snaps your neck from behind, you will feel profound relief.

The mountain is gentle, the mountain is blind. Those who climb the mountain and find sweetness never take care to check for fangs.

* * *

They die. It will not be all at once. They will die like ice melting, a little at a time until it is all gone. The woman with yellow eyes goes first. She will simply wilt and disappear, burned out before her time. She will be buried in a grave marked with black flowers, and a cross lashed together with a ribbon. The fighter is next. Loneliness has never suited her.

It will just be the blind woman and her lover, and the blind woman is the next to die. The only survivor will finish her biography with a flourish and use the technology left in the ship to send it as many places as she can think of. She will know that the transmission is traceable. The house will still be enough ship to take off, and for the first time in over a decade, the mountain will be empty of human life.

She will fly out over the ocean and search for something to belong to. She will die before she finds it—but not before she understands that she will never find it. She will make peace with death and pass from the world as the nose of the ship dips toward the waves, her soul joining the black exhaust as it spirals up toward heaven. She will not see the irony. Neither will you.


End file.
